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38 Clever Christmas Food Hacks That Will Make Your Life So Much Easier

38 Clever Christmas Food Hacks That Will Make Your Life So Much Easier

Articles: Instagram Coasters — By Hayley Decker — Foam Magazine Articles As our iPhone libraries begin to overflow, we're always on the search for practical, tangible uses for our Instagram snaps. Spruce up your place or dish these D.I.Y. coasters out to your friends to remind you all of your latest outdoor adventure/ music festival outing/ seafaring weekend. Or the newest FOAM cover of course. What You'll Need:-4-inch round, flat cork pieces -Modge Podge glue -Card stock paper -Instagram print-outs -Foam or felt mounting dots How To Make Them: 1. 2. 3. 4. Bottoms up!

The 20 Recipes That Won Pinterest This Year 15 DIY Hacks You'll Need This Holiday Season DIY Floral Sunglasses We always claim to see the world through rose colored glasses . . . but how about rose trimmed glasses? In honor of the widespread floral trend and our love of Dolce & Gabbana‘s Baroque-inspired fall collection, we’re DIYing a pair of outrageously fabulous sunglasses using the same charming little ceramic roses from a recent tutorial. These will surely be a pair of shades you won’t go unnoticed in this summer! You’ll need:a pair of sunglassesa variety of ceramic roses and flowersdisposable container or popsicle sticka handful of toothpicksE6000 Start by squeezing a small amount of E6000 into a disposable container or onto a wooden popsicle stick. Press the flower firmly onto the outer corner of the sunglasses. Add a few small flowers down the right side of the glasses. Repeat on the other side and allow to dry for a couple of hours. Your floral shades are ready to wear! (top image via Vogue.uk, rest of images by HonestlyWTF)

The Easiest Thanksgiving That Anyone Can Make Husbands and YOUR Gifts: Does he pick them out? Sometimes little things. I got an iphone for both my birthday (in the fall) and Christmas, so I'm not expecting a 'big' gift since that was my gift. But I did pick myself up a cake pop pan at Walgreens just because it looked like so much fun and I bought a pair of slippers for myself today at Kohls. They didn't have any women's that I wanted in my size, so I got them at the boys department (they all look the same) and with my credit and coupon I'm still $2 ahead :) Dh would never want to buy me a pair of boys slippers if they didn't have my size, but I wanted the indoor/outdoor kind and now ds, I and dh all have the same kind, just all different sizes! And there *is* that mysteriously heavy package that arrived from Amazon the other day that dh told me NOT to open...hmmmm, I have no idea!

All Natural Lip Balm The week leading up to the new year wasn't exactly how I had pictured it. It was the last week of the boys winter break. I had envisioned walks around downtown looking at the lights, taking down the Christmas tree together, continuing our holiday baking marathon and maybe even a little post Christmas mall browsing. But alas, none of those things happened. The flu happened. Or rather, what I guess must have been the flu. Thankfully, I had made a big batch of lip balm the week before Christmas to give as little handmade gifts to my girlfriends. This recipe is super simple. The recipe came from this blog last year and I tweaked it a bit and she grabbed it from this book where she had tweaked it a bit. Sweet Orange Lip Balm 8 Tablespoons Coconut Oil 3 Tablespoons Beeswax 1.5 Tablespoons Raw Honey 30 drops Sweet Orange essential oil (if you want color) 1/2 stick of natural lipstick (I like Jane Iredale and Josie Moran) Remove mixture from heat, and add peppermint oil and lipstick.

How To Take a Perfect Food Photo Holiday Hop for Goodies- Birthday Hat Christmas Tree Time to get this Holiday Hop of Goodies going! For the next 3 weeks I will be posting holiday skinny mini recipes, crafts, decorating ideas, giveaways and more! This party is a blog hop hosted by Susie QT Pies Scraps of Life . I am participating which means you will find other bloggers hosting this same hop. When you add your own goodies in the below linky it will show up on their linky, too! If you have a blog, feel free to grab the code at the bottom of the linky and add it to your own holiday post! The more the merrier! Birthday Hat Christmas Trees The final evening of our Thanksgiving/ Family Reunion is always a Christmas celebration. This year was our turn to host the family reunion. I covered party hats I had purchased from a dollar store with green felt ahead of time and created a sample tree for the children to see. The children were each given one to decorate with sticky backed foam shapes that had a Christmas theme and I put out so sparkly gold pipe cleaners.

DIY: Mason Jar Vases Over the weekend I decided to spruce up some old mason jars. I first saw these on Pinterest and then discovered this DIY and basically fell in love with the idea. Who knew that with a little spray paint you could give an old jar a completely new look? What you'll need: mason jarsspray paintshipping labelsx-acto knife or scissorsfresh flowers Use your shipping label paper to print your silhouette of choice. Spray paint your jars. Once your jars are completely dry, remove the sticker. Add some fresh flowers and you're all set!

Umami: why the fifth taste is so important I am often flabbergasted when I think about how humans came to develop such complex culinary skills. Granted, 1.8m years have passed since our ancestor, homo erectus, began to cook. But still, leavened bread! That was one hell of a happy accident. Our predilection for umami – the only recently recognised (by western scientists) "fifth taste", after salt, sweet, sour and bitter - is a fascinating piece in the jigsaw of our gastronomic evolution. Since studies confirmed just a few years ago that our mouths contain taste receptors for this moreish savoury taste (the other four "basic tastes" had been widely accepted for, ooh, a few thousand years), so much in the history of recipes suddenly makes sense. Escoffier, the legendary 19th-century French chef who invented veal stock, felt sure that a savoury fifth taste was the secret of his success, but everyone was too busy gorging on his food to take much notice of his theories. Putting a name to a taste What gives good glutamate?

Homemade Christmas Gift Wrap Ideas: Bags, Bows, Tags and Wrapping Paper Whether you’re giving a store bought gift or a homemade one, wrapping that special gift is just as much fun as buying or creating it, but buying the gift wrapping supplies can get expensive. So, this year get creative and save a lot of money by using one of these great homemade Christmas gift wrap ideas for bags, bows, tags and wrapping paper. Here are several fun homemade Christmas gift wrap ideas for bags, bows, tags and wrapping paper: Brown Paper Bags: You can cut them apart or use as is and decorate them with fun designs using just a black Sharpie marker and a correctional pen. *Some other homemade gift wrap ideas you can do are: Just take a look around your home and you would be surprised by the things that you can use to create beautiful homemade gift wrap ideas for bags, bows, tags and wrapping paper.

DIY: Fairy Dust Necklaces | LexyLevin I am and always will be a kid at heart. I still adore anything related to princesses or Disney. I will, on any random evening, watch a Disney movie while drinking Yoo-hoo! But I digress… If you have been a reader for a while, you know I used to run a handmade jewelry Etsy shop (and still have a few items available if you are interested). Since redirecting my energy towards Gallymogger, I find myself still wanting to create fun and whimsical jewelry every once in a while. On that note, let me present my latest silly creation…the fairy dust necklace! Here is what you will need: small glass vial (I found mine here) glitter eye hook necklace chain jump ring (if necessary) Directions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. All in all this is a very inexpensive project that makes a great looking gift! UPDATE: Click on over for all new colors perfect for spring and summer!

The $5 Savings Plan - Have you tried it? Have you heard about the $5 Savings Plan? It's an idea that's been circulating in the blogosphere for awhile, so I thought I'd see if any of you have tried it. What I like about it is that it seems like a relatively painless way to save, and yet could add up to pretty substantial savings over the course of a year. Here's how the $5 Savings Plan works: Whenever a $5 bill comes into your possession, you save it in a special jar or envelope. Have you tried the $5 Savings Plan or another similar savings method?

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